Corning Gorilla Glass 4 announced – more durable against drops

Corning has announced a new revision to its Gorilla Glass which is widely used on mid range and better smartphones and tablets. Gorilla Glass 4 is said to build upon the current/last versions everyday resistance to scratches and scrapes to make this glass more robust if subject to impacts – caused by common events such as when you drop your smartphone.

Main focus of improvement – resistance to breakages caused by dropping

A very common cause of smartphone, and tablet, woes is when the device is dropped onto a hard surface such as the sidewalk or anywhere rocky. Even those with bulky padded cases for their devices can come a cropper in these instances. Having a smashed or shattered screen is really a no-no with a device which you interact with via touch. Also seeing the broken glass every time you check your device and instinctively holding it to your face to answer a call can quite literally grate!

So Corning scientists have been testing and subjecting its device models with Gorilla Glass 4 (GG4) onto rough surfaces and dropping them from a height of about a metre (3.3ft). It found that a GG4 device survived such drop impacts up to 80% of the time. That is apparently twice as good a performance percentage as its predecessor.

Corning Gorilla Glass 4

With this latest change to the GG formula has the strength of the glass been impaired in any way? Sometimes changing a materials’ physical properties changes it in other ways in a kind of seesaw effect. Corning says no – “there are no downsides,” according to Cliff Hund, Corning East Asia President.

More suitable than sapphire

Hund went on to explain why GG4 is a better choice for portable device screens than sapphire. “When it comes to visible scratch resistance, sapphire is top of the line,” he admitted. But when any impact is involved sapphire trails behind Gorilla Glass “by quite a bit,” he said.

Reading into the details of the Corning ‘rough surface’ test I wasn’t impressed to hear that what you might imagine was a jagged rocky or even pebbly surface was actually a surface covered in 180-grit sandpaper.

Mark has worked for a number of years as a newshound on other technology news websites. He decided to write for Tech Assimilate thanks to this web site's open embracing vision of the fascinating world of personal technology. Mark has also worked in the printing and advertising industries for tens of years previously.